Ed, my old neighbour in Saskatchewan, scoffed at my plans for improved health in this new year. I am planning to become 44 per cent improved in my memory, concentration and focus. Ed, in obvious doubt, asked me, 鈥淲hat does your wife think about that?鈥� I had to admit she also is skeptical.
My life is filled with scoffers and doubters. Why wouldn鈥檛 I have confidence in tablets that have been clinically tested? In the clinical tests, adults taking the pills improved their memory, concentration, and focus by 44 per cent compared to the placebo group. I know both the wife and Ed will feel impressed when I鈥檓 able to come up with names and facts with the authority of a know-it-all who is as sharp as a tack. Even Ed admitted that it would be a nice change.
I told Ed that along with a tablet a day to keep me focused with a good memory, I will add a soft gel. The soft gel will reduce my appetite, balance my blood sugar and maintain healthy cholesterol. This pill promises that it will have me feeling full, so that means I will stop snacking. I will lose weight and become thin like I was in my youth. Ed did not comment about the soft gel, which doesn鈥檛 come with a clinically proven seal. He suggested next Christmas; my family can give me pills for Christmas or the fountain of youth for sale on swampland in Florida. I stopped telling him about my improved health plans.
Good health is an excellent gift that may not remain permanently. Since Adam and Eve, people have suffered from varying degrees of sickness, pain and the finality of death. God works through doctors and medicine and treatments to help the sick. Sometimes we forget that health and healing are gifts of God, not merely from the health-care system, science and research. A pandemic reminds us good health can be beyond us and our best health-care efforts are never the full answer. Sickness, suffering and death will not be eradicated from this side of heaven.
The Bible tells of a woman who had been subject to bleeding for 12 years. It says, 鈥淪he had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse.鈥� (Mark 5:26) A huge crowd was following and pressing around Jesus as he was on his way to Jairus鈥� house to heal his dying daughter. 鈥淲hen the woman heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak. Immediately her bleeding stopped, and she felt in her body that she was free from her suffering.鈥� (Mark 5:27, 29). The woman had touched Jesus, thinking that if she just touched his clothes, she would be healed, and her healing occurred as she thought it would.
Jesus realized power had gone out from him and turned around and asked, 鈥淲ho touched my clothes?鈥� The woman came forward and confessed it was she who had touched his clothes. Jesus encouraged the woman to go in peace, free from her suffering. God restores the sick and dying on his own and through health-care workers and medicine. Praise God!
